Apple’s M1 chip outperforms x86 chips even when emulating with Rosetta

Apple’s M1 chip outperforms x86 chips even when it is emulating non-native x86 apps using emulation.  As per the latest Geekbench benchmarks, Apple’s M1 chip is faster in single-core benchmarks than Intel and AMD’s x86 chips, despite using Rosetta 2 translation layer for emulation.

Apple's M1 Chip

Apple’s M1 chip outperforms x86 chips even when emulating with Rosetta

Appearing as ‘VirtualApple’, these benchmarks have been captured by running Geekbench on an M1 Mac using Rosetta. These benchmarks show that despite emulation, the M1 chip still outperforms all other Intel chips used in iMac, Mac Pro, and MacBooks. Here is where Rosetta 2 stands in performance with an x86 copy of Geekbench running on MacBook Air:

  • Single-core: 1313
  • Multi-core: 5888

Without emulation, and with native apps, these are the scores you get from Apple’s M1 chip on a Mac mini.

  • Single-core: 1741
  • Multi-core: 7643

As you can see, during emulation, the performance decreases by approximately 24%, but it is still faster than any other Intel-based Mac. These numbers are from the M1 Mac mini, which is currently the cheapest Mac in Apple’s line-up, and also the fastest in single-core benchmarks. In multi-core benchmarks, it stands toe-to-toe against the likes of Mac Pro and iMac Pro.

It is not a hidden secret that Apple Silicon has been outperforming Intel’s chips for some time, despite shipping in devices like iPhone and iPad. Now that Apple has come out all guns blazing with its M1 chips in three new Macs, it is looking to provide tremendous performance benefits and power efficiency. We are looking forward to seeing early reviews and finding out exactly how the new Macs perform in real-world usage. If anything, we feel that Apple has been conservative with the comparisons that they showed during the announcement keynote and on their website. The company was careful to not call out Intel, or compare the M1 chip directly against any of Intel’s processors.

via MacRumors

Read more:

About the Author

Addicted to social media and in love with iPhone, started blogging as a hobby. And now it's my passion for every day is a new learning experience. Hopefully, manufacturers will continue to use innovative solutions and we will keep on letting you know about them.

Leave a comment